Cool, geology is being discussed, and what has been said on this thread seems accurate. Slip on the Garlock fault is left-lateral, so the north side moves west relative to the south side. This has the effect of making the big Bend grow. I believe there was a paper on this by Bohannon and Howell a decade or 2 ago. It is true that "the community" thinks the odds of the Carizo Plain segment rupturing is low in the next 30 years, because stream offsets suggest it slips 9 or 10 m in quakes and it has only built up 4 or 5 of accumulated strain since 1857. I forget which Tejon Pass is: I assume it is the Grapevine, which I remember well from driving between Santa Barbara and Bakersfield in my delicate little Tercel (which I am still driving 12 years later). I believe Gorman is a village there. The 1857 rupture runs through the swimmimg pool of the motel, the gas station, and very close to the Carl's Jr, according to John Crowell. If this breaks, in my humble opinion (OK, I'm not very humble), it will be more than a M7 (4 or 5 m of slip is non-trivial-the magnitude is also related to how much of the fault breaks, and I think the segments farther southeast are considered more ripe...). And, Olsen and Archuleta and others have been doing some simulations of a rupture on the San Andreas (maybe a segment farther southeast), and this 3D simulation (that is what gigabytes of RAM are for) is pretty ugly for LA: the waves slow down, amplify, and bounce around off the edges of LA basin.....I guess I better get back to work. Or Christmas shop. Or drink. The advantage of not being funded is that I can waste massive amounts of time. That is also the disadvantage. Chris